Mages, ten-man raiding, and other things that are awesome.

You and I go back a long way, Fishing. If it weren’t for you, it would have taken me much longer to afford my first epic flying. Who knew that so many people needed those lovely Golden Fishsticks, but were too lazy to fish them for themselves? Those fish sticks were “golden” indeed!

We’ve spent so many hours together. You were there when I hung out with friends and talked, giving us something to do at the same time! What better way to pass the time than to hang out with a buddy and do something useful? People always wondered why I spent so much time with you. They didn’t understand us, Fishing. It’s okay, though. We had each other. I devotedly pursued you, through crocolisks, a fishing hat. You helped me meet Mr. Pinchy and my crab pet. Eventually we found a sea turtle together. Remember those hours by the Dalaran fountain? I loved catching all those coins with you. You never did give me a jeweled fishing pole, but that’s okay. A friendship isn’t just about what you stand to gain.

I'm standing next to a crustacean the size of a young dragon, but it's okay. He's on my side.

You helped to bolster us through countless raids. The magical combination of fish – lovingly prepared – helped us all be smarter and faster. I prepared feasts for people in battlegrounds, I carried a stash of fish on me at all times. Magic keeps them from smelling, you know. I was so excited to see how you’d changed after the Cataclysm! I know more people had been paying attention to you. They wanted to make you “more fun.”

Fishing… I don’t understand why you’ve been so cold to me this expansion. I hate to admit it, but I don’t like your new face. I don’t want to pluck crabs from the canal. Your feasts used to be available for everyone who had the tenacity to learn how to make them. Now, I can’t even use your bounty to make them until my friends and I have caught ten thousand other fish from pools. I don’t mind spending that much time with you, Fishing. Really, I don’t. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad. I was consoled by the fact that we could spend time together while I prepared my own food, but Fishing – there seems to be some grave oversight. The fish I need don’t congregate in pools.

You see these salmon? Now THEY knew the value of schooling.

You’ve put me between a rock and a hard place, Fishing. I can’t make your feast until I’ve fished many, many fish – and the fish I need won’t help me to do that. So I’m seeing other fish. I thought I could use that time to build up a stock of the fish I need to make feasts once I’m able to make them. Imagine my dismay when I realized that one of those three fish also can’t be found in pools.

I’m trying to be understanding, Fishing, I really am. I caught three hundred fish last night. I want to love you, but you’re really trying my patience. All of the fish for fish feasts used to be found in various pools in different zones. Anyone could learn to make a fish feast, and then that fish feast could be shared with friends. Now the feasts, once made, are stuck with you – I can’t even stock my guild bank with them – that is, assuming we ever fish up enough fish to learn the recipe in the first place. Do you really think that forcing yourself on people like this is going to make you more popular?

You still have a few things going for you, Fishing. Catching volatiles from you is positively sexy. That appeals to the enterprising crowd, you can use that! All you have to do is consolidate some of your fish into pools – they like to school, don’t they? It shouldn’t be too hard – and once you’ve done that, put some fun things in your fishing bags again. I recognize that the awards have to be applicable to characters of all levels. Still, I miss the days when I felt like you cared about me, Fishing. If we have to spend enough time together for me to catch another four thousand fish from pools, I wish we could both be enjoying it. As it stands, I’m not sure that I will. Can’t we go back to the way things were?
Love,

Thanks Janyaa! I thought it’d be better to keep it a bit lighthearted as opposed to “MURGLESNOUT CAN DIE IN A FIRE,” and then burst into tears. 😉 It’s really not all THAT bad, but some of the things are pretty annoying.

I agree with you about the Fishing for the most part. The feasts are just painful, as are some of the types of fish needed. The one bright side in Fishing so far that I’ve encountered is the SHEER JOY of fishing the Shipwreck Debris in Tol Barad, as those crates can have marvelous, wondrous treats in them!

There’s also some cruel irony that the Agi fish (Fathom Eel) is so incredibly easy to fish up in Tol Barad now that I don’t need them. Sigh.

It’s true. There are TONS of fishing pools there (and they are what I’ve been fishing to try and get closer to that total so we can learn the fish feasts.) I thought, “Once we learn fish feasts I won’t have to do all this open-water fishing!”

I hope my post conveyed my ambiguous feelings. I didn’t want to just write a big whine – I’ve always liked fishing. I just find it sort of funny (sad?) that Cataclysm is making me love/hate it. I know so many people who already hate it – when someone who used to really LIKE it is having mixed feelings it says that something’s a bit “off” to me. 🙂

Haha, during the entire time that I was reading this post I thought “I’ll have to mention the Murglesnout in a comment”, but then your P.S. beat me to it. 😛 I don’t need it to go away, I just want to be able to cook it!

I’ve never done much fishing, except for what I needed for my raid food, and sure enough… I need lavascale catfish, which can’t be found in a pool. No pools + low fishing skill = no lavascale catfish >_<. I feel your pain…

The crabs? I don’t even know any more, truthfully – I stopped doing both fishing and cooking dailies, something I used to do without fail each day. My mixed feelings about cooking are a whole other post I’ll probably spare the world from having to read. 😉

Lol, whoops. Yes, the crabs ^_^’. I’m still doing both every day, but for the sake of building up my skills in each. I’m 525 cooking, but doing the dailies ultimately gets me the recipes. As for fishing, I’m only 350, so I’m doing it daily >_<

Having made an adorable multi-bunches sporting goblin called Murglesnout, I feel less resentful when I fish them up now. Although our guild message of the day is currently “the next person to put Murglesnout in the gbank will be taken away and shot” which confuses non-fishermen as they wonder how people are putting my goblin in the guild bank.

OMG. *insert moment of shock here*
You know, I had not realized what the relationship between the fish feast achievement and the pools was before you pointed it out, probably because I kinda ditched Fishing as a relaxing way to spend idle time because I found an equally relaxing but way more addictive one… Archeology.

…I guess the rest of my guild is going to be on its own when it comes to unlocking the recipe, at least until I find Tyrande’s Favorite Doll. I promise I’ll get to my fishing then, even if I’ll have to ignore the Archeology mounts/rares/titles for a while. ;p

I used to love seeing the little yellow dot on my map indicating a school, knowing that I would get at least a few fish I needed. Then I could fly to the next one…
Now, not so much.
Like you, I need Deepsea Sagefish and apparently they prefer riding solo. *sigh*
And the Murglesnout, don’t get me started on the Murglesnout >_<

Vid – let me pass on how we managed to “fish up” our feast. (Please note that this idea was lovingly stolen from Ninel over at Swiftmend).

We set up a “Guild Fishing Tournament” on an off night, I think it was a Friday evening (Ninel’s guild did it as a “raid” on a raid night).

The dealio was that we were going to start at 8:00 pm and fish until we needed our feast. Anyone was welcome to participate, but you could only fish from pools (great way to skill up fishing, as you are guaranteed a catch from a pool!), the pools could be anywhere in the game (I fished deviate in the Barrens) as long as they were in pools.

We made some great prizes – 10k gold for the person who fished up the most fish, a moonkin hatchling and lil’ ragnaros, other varied assorted pets and things (we found the new engineering ones popular). And basically, everyone who participated got a prize at the end – with those who fished up the most getting the biggest prizes.

We had Brade queue up Trivial Pursuit on his iPhone (same one can be found on PS, xbox, etc) – and we all started fishing and playing the Trivial Pursuit as one collective team.

3 rounds of trivial pursuit and 4 turtle mounts later – we had our feast. We had 19 participants and needed somewhere around 5k fish at the start of the night (I think). It took about 2.5 hours – but ended up being a total blast, and a lot of guildmates really got into it. Also, we learned that collectively we kinda sucked at random trivia! But all in all, I don’t think anyone regreted spending their Friday night participating!

People would log on randomly after we had started, ask what was going on, and hop in vent and join up with the fishing and trivia. I really can’t stress how much fun we had doing this!

Oh – and everyone that participated got savory deviate delight the next day 😉

Well that’s all sorts of disappointing! I thought you could fish the ones needed for the feasts from schools. Like yourself, I kept them on my toon, and stocked the guild bank with the feasts (and occasionally fish for leveling cooks) too.

I dislike fishing, but enjoy the buffs it gives so have a toon on each server that knows how to cook and fish. Before taking a break from WoW, I transferred my Druid to a new server. Since she’s away from my priest who’s maxed out in it, she’s been picked to level it.

I’ve popped in Wrath of the Lick King trilogy, got comfortable and am fishing. It would be so much easier if I leveled those skills on all my toons while I leveled them.

Our guild made the fish up the Fish feast into an event. I wish I could have joined in the fun, but weekends are the time when I normally take a break from the computer (use it so much with work) and hang out with my daughter.

I know, this is good news! I wonder if I’ll be able to sell them for this purpose, though? I won’t need them myself, since I always have mage food to hand. (Cake > Murglesnout, no matter how you cook it!)

Your shared topic is surprisingly similar to a habit I’ve had for years of writing “open letters” to express my opinions, in the format “Dear X, [opinion]. Love, Chris”. I trust that’s just a coincidence.

(You’ve appropriated a format that’s literally thousands of years old (see also: The New Testament) and now you’re complaining when someone else uses it? Seriously?)

As Chris noted, the format itself isn’t exactly new, nor are my feelings about fishing. I would never deliberately omit a citation to another person or idea and I certainly hope you aren’t implying some malicious intent or snub on my part. I have participated in BA topics in the past, but this wasn’t one of those times – or else it would have been duly reported and linked at the top.